Ah, Final Fantasy VII. What a classic you are. Oh wait, you have trophies now that you’re on PS4? Well, guess I should go get them!
For many Final Fantasy fans, Final Fantasy VII was their first FF game they played. When Square Enix brought the Steam version over to PS4, they brought it over with trophies. Seeing as I had the goal of obtaining every Final Fantasy platinum, I, of course, had to go for it. The trophy list is fairly straightforward, but let’s go over my thoughts on them!
All things considered, there aren’t actually that many story-related trophies in FFVII. There are some trophies that may as well be considered story related however, with the only directly story related ones being defeating Diamond Weapon and winning the game. However, trophies such as winning your first battle (how would you even get past the start if you didn’t?), using a Limit Break, and winning a Chocobo race may as well be considered story related. While winning a Chocobo race isn’t directly required (seeing as according to PSN Profiles, obtaining Vincent is more common), it is definitely extremely hard to miss. Additionally, there is also using a summon Materia in battle, something that is also pretty hard to not do along the way.
Then there’s the random trophies for doing certain things along the way in the story. The first one that comes up is having Cloud chosen by Don Corneo. For veterans to the game this is a fairly easy trophy. Newcomers may find it a bit harder, but it simply requires getting all of the correct items within Wall Market. Another comes in the form of getting the Barret date. This trophy is definitely a fair bit harder than getting chosen by Don Corneo, but thankfully there are some very good guides out there to help manipulate your way towards it.
Finally, there’s the trophy for obtaining Bahamut ZERO. To do this, you need to successfully obtain every Huge Materia during that part of the story on what would be disc 2. Again, for those who are veterans to the game, this will likely be fairly easy for them, however newcomers may struggle a lot with it as the pieces can be hard to get. Since I had played it before – albeit it has been 7 or 8 years since I last fully played it – I was able to get through these without too much difficulty. Fort Condor did give me some difficulties, though thanks to some of my speedrun friends, I was able to use a trick to get through it faster.
Let’s not forget the trophies for learning every level 4 limit break. No, not just obtaining the manual for them, but actually learning them. The worst of this bunch is, of course, learning Aerith’s. You only have one “disc” to do it, and while some folks may know that they need to use her a lot to get the different limits, others won’t. I ended up opting to just grind it out before the Temple of the Ancients. Excluding Aerith’s, some others can be a bit tricky to obtain. Barret’s requires you to successfully get the Corel Huge Materia (which you need for another trophy anyways), and Cid’s is hidden away on the Gelnika.
Before I took on the super bosses, I decided to go ahead and just beat the game here. As expected, it wasn’t too difficult to take care of, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to get a picture of the “Beat the Game” trophy. Thanks a lot, gameplay recording blocks…
Two of the biggest trophies come in the forms of the game’s two superbosses – Ruby Weapon and Emerald Weapon. Since I had a plan for what my final trophy would be, I decided to take these guys on with a bit more of a challenge. I’ve included my fights with both of these super bosses, as those will say more than I ever could. Since I decided to take on the harder of the two, Ruby Weapon, on first, I was in for a nice challenge. He took me several tries of getting just the right setup and balance of using my Dazers, but he did eventually fall. Emerald proved to be much easier, simply becoming a matter of making sure he didn’t Aire Tam Storm me. I did have a setup to survive if he did, but it’s always better if he doesn’t, you know?
With those guys out of the way, what remained in my path was the grinding. Well, okay, first I went to go grab my Gold Chocobo and Master Summon materia from the guy in Kalm (since that works for the trophy to obtain Master Summon), but then I headed into the crater to go grind out the more grindy trophies – level 99 and 99,999,999 gil. These two trophies went hand-in-hand fairly well together, though the gil one ended up being the last one I got of the two. The Magic Pot/Mover/Master Tonberry room within the crater works extremely well for grinding this out, especially if you grab a ton of All Materias (the best way to get gil in the game).
After all of this was said and done, there was one trophy remaining: obtaining Knights of the Round. I decided to leave this one for last, partly to challenge myself to beating the game without it, and partly just because I could. Really, I just didn’t want to do Chocobo Breeding (I’ve done it before, I don’t want to do it again), meaning I had to beat Ruby without it. Besides, it’s a nice, hilarious way to end off the whole thing by getting the shiny Platinum trophy pop up when you have the ‘Obtained “Knights of the Round” Materia’ message on screen!
For people who are veterans to Final Fantasy VII, this is a fairly straightforward platinum. If you’re new to the game, there are definitely trophies that will cause you some issues. Even though it had been several years since I last completely played the game, I was still able to get through it without too much fuss besides the two super bosses. Oh and no, I didn’t use the God Mode cheat except for messing around. I did, however, use 3x speed, because those cutscenes are really long and I wanted to get through them. That, and speeding up that final grinding. Thanks to all that, my in-game platinum time for Final Fantasy VII only came in no where near where it probably should have.
Final Fantasy VII Platinum Difficulty
3/5
My review of Final Fantasy VII for PS4 can be found over on our sister site, Final Fantasy and More.
